


Dead Girls

by untamableseas



Category: Sharp Objects (TV), Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn
Genre: Bad Poetry, Dark, Death, Femininity, Feminist Themes, Freeform, Misogyny, Morbid, Poetry, Sexist Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:54:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25134202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untamableseas/pseuds/untamableseas
Summary: Musings on our collective fascination with dead girls, inspired by HBO's Sharp Objects
Kudos: 9





	Dead Girls

The girl on the tv drips saccharine from a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes as she croons  
“You looove dead girls”  
She is grave and callous at once, and she is right  
Take one look at what we call “entertainment” and you’ll see

Of course, dead boys are plentiful too, but they just don’t have the same ring to them  
Dead boys are violence and sacrifice and glory, and a hundred other words  
That roughly translate to “human nature” if you’re being generous,  
And “boys will be boys” if you’re not 

But dead girls.... dead girls are a hot commodity, romanticized tragedy never looked so good  
Dead girls on the tv, girls given life in ink and laid to rest between pages in every library,  
A mass-produced perversion of everything that’s good and innocent and desired,  
But worse still are the dead girls that we wish were nothing more than stories

Girls that we couldn’t quite grab onto,  
Who slipped through our fingers and became ghosts  
Occasionally pounding their fists on the walls of our hearts  
A guilt-soaked reminder that we only let them in when it was already too late

We mourn our dead girls and we’re mesmerized by them,  
Like a car crash you’re certain you can’t bear to see, until you find your traitorous eyes would sooner extricate your skull than look away  
Maybe we’re all dead girls, in a way, dragging around the skins of a life that we’ve already lived and died and shuddered out of, but can’t bring ourselves to leave behind  
Maybe we love the dead girls because they remind us that we’re not 

But then again...  
Maybe “you love dead girls” is really nothing more than a passing line in a tv show,  
And this poem is just an exercise in the most melodramatic irony.


End file.
